Fuel consumption: sail/motor. are you serious?!

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by mvweebles

No. If that's your use case, power options thin considerably even at $250k. Not impossible - there are some one-off or conversions that come up. A very nice Cheoy Lee 46 LRC with stabilizers sold last year for $130k so they come up, but rarely.

But if your intended cruising grounds are North America, Caribbean, and Pacific to Alaska, the list of three posted isn't bad. The Sea Ranger would be my first one to look at. That said, I'm spoiled by hydraulic stabilizers. I wouldn't buy a trawler without them.

As I've mentioned a couple times in this thread. If you want to cross oceans or you're going ultra-cheap, suitable sailboat is considerably less expensive to purchase.

Exactly. and exactly what I posted before. $200k-$300k was entry level.

i’m not even an expert on trawlers but I figured that price level out pretty quickly when I was trying to look at ones that would be suitable to cross oceans.

The people arguing against my price points weren't considering adequate boats, as I had said.

[sailorboy1]

just so many things could be written, but .........

[capn_billl]

Originally Posted by mvweebles

I don't understand sailors. Whenever topic of fuel consumption comes up someone pipes in with outboards or massive diesels burning a LOT of fuel. As if that's apples to apples. No matter how many times someone with experience with displacement trawlers reminds them that the fuel burn difference is negligible (and the noise and comfort of a trawler significantly better than a sailboat under power), they always return to chest-thumping comparisons of the far end of powerboats. I guess it's just a matter of making yourselves feel better about sweating your butts off in the hot Florida sun (or freezing them in the cold PNW).

Fair point.

If you bought a small trawler with a long narrow full displacement hull, and small low profile cabin, you would get nearly the MPG as a sail boat.

If you bought a sailboat, and removed the mast and added extra fuel tanks you would get exactly the same mpg.

[OldManMirage]

Originally Posted by Chotu

To cross oceans?

Sorry, your post #41 didn't specify the ability to cross oceans. I incorrectly assumed we were just talking about general cruising. Obviously most trawlers lack the range to cross oceans. That takes a very different boat.

Are you planning to cross oceans in your boat ? It has outboards doesn't it ? I'm sure it probably will sail well if you get it to that point, but I'm not sure I would want to cross oceans with outboard propulsion as my auxiliary.

Although people have done it and still do so it's certainly possible.

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Looks like we arrived at a lot of the same conclusions.

My design addresses all of my complaints after decades of sailing older monohulls. I've never actually cared much about interior space and have found I just adjust to any size interior. So that's never been a factor.

What I do care about is getting somewhere, having a comfortable ride and not being out in the elements suffering.

That's why I went fast catamaran, longer lwl and running all controls inside the salon.

The boat I wanted didn't exist at the time and the closest was the Gunboat 48 at millions of $$$.

This is why I was forced to build.

But I was very close to going with trawlers. If only that initial purchase price was a little less steep. The other advantage to the build (there are too many disadvantages to count) was the payment plan. I paid what I could as time went by. It's the installment plan. Literally. I needed to install X component and paid for it. Lol

Similar story to us but we have cruised cats before.

We were building a 55ft powercat based on performance sail cat hulls but slightly modified aft to prevent squat with slightly larger engines.
Had the shell done and primed, all bulkheads in, rudders and shafts in, engines in and a shed load of bits.
She put me in hospital in my 40's and I never could get back into again.
And as we both got older we wanted more nice things and realised if keeping true to the design and DWL in reality, it wouldn't work.*

Our current vessel made an appearance at the right time for a lot less $$ than it would cost me to finish the cat so we stepped sideways into that.
Far more comfort than the cat could offer and a walk in wine cellar to boot.

Higher fuel burn but not that bad considering the weight we are shifting
We do 15 lph @ 7.5 knots and 65 tonne and a 3500nm range
The cat was 8 lph @ 8 knots shifting 9 tonne and a 1000nm range


* Lifepo4 so much cheaper now vs then so now it would work.

[Don C L]

BTW, maybe I missed it if someone has mentioned it already but motoring with the mainsail up gets me better MPG, and a more stable ride, unless I am on a heading directly into the wind. I still see a lot folks motoring their sailboats with mains furled and wonder if they have tried it otherwise. (Having a full battened main helps too.)

[team karst]

We have been seeing few unstabilized trawlers beyond 200 nm offshore of our home state. Down here, that distance is where it starts getting good. In spite of the good fuel mileage and range, something is holding back trawlers.

[RedneckRedcoat]

Originally Posted by Adelie

A 45’ trawler going about 6kt will get about 2nm/gal.
A 50’ sailboat motoring at about 6kt will get about 8-10nm/gal.
Both diesels.
The trawler will probably have somewhat more living room than the sailboat.

Being dependent on wind for propulsion sailboats tend to be optimized for low drag at the expense of living volume.

Or you could not use any fuel and just sail everywhere when the conditions are right.

Having spoke with yanmar support recently you shouldn’t really measure gallons to nautical miles or speed, it should be to rev’s . We have a 40 foot sailboat. At 1500 revs we use 1/2 gallon of diesel an hour when motoring. At 3000 revs slight over a gallon an hour.

knots is going to depend on how clean your bottom is , are you going into a head wind or is the wind behind you, are you going with a current or against a current.

All of that can effect the speed you’re actually doing as compared to the Revs your engine is producing.

We motored for hours on one occasion up cape fear to Wilmington from snows cut doing 3250 revs and only produced 1.5 knots due to current and a 30 knot head wind.

[RedneckRedcoat]

A wise old sailor once told me to do this as well.

It also helps with stabilization of the boat and helps stop interference from waves.

Plus the added benefit is that powerboaters tend to give way because they assume your undersail

[clakiep]

I think I said it already in this forum before. Cruising and living on a powerboat has advantages of course. But I would feel very bad motoring along with a nice favorable wind blowing over my deck and no sails at all to catch it. Depending on area and season You quite often will be motoring for hours and days even on a high performance sailboat. So, no need to be radical : a nice well motorised trawler with a simple rigg, not only to stabilise the boat, or for emergencies, but also for some enjoyable sailing ocasionally.

Capt. Claus - ocean tramp of the eighties

[RedneckRedcoat]

Originally Posted by Don C L

BTW, maybe I missed it if someone has mentioned it already but motoring with the mainsail up gets me better MPG, and a more stable ride, unless I am on a heading directly into the wind. I still see a lot folks motoring their sailboats with mains furled and wonder if they have tried it otherwise. (Having a full battened main helps too.)

A wise old sailor once told me you should always have your mains out when motoring as it helps stabilize the boat as well as aiding in fuel consumption

[Colin Stone]

If not mentioned, have a look at Steve Dashew's experience. He used has a really good website explaining all the design considerations. He built the motor Unsailboat. After a while motoring the FPB, he came to a conclusion that motoring was cheaper than sailing.
https://setsail.com/

It depends on how you use your oil - diesel or sail fabrics and ropes??

[Nicholson58]

We are a 58 LOA, 47.5 LWL ketch, 40 tons loaded. We carry 380 gallons of diesel in five tanks. In a seven month Caribbean cruising season we burn 150-200 gallons with our 115 hp Westerbeke 6-cylinder tractor engine and the 4-cylinder 12.5 kw generator.

The prop is a continuously variable pitch Hundestat 24 inch three blade and 2:1 reduction. Motoring alone is 4 miles per gallon. Motor-sailing is 8 mpg at prop speed of 400-450 rpm. We keep the boat in Trinidad for hurricane season and fuel up in November at Trinidad prices, about $2.5/gal. We figure our range comfortably to about 1700 nm.

There was a famous trawler in Trinidad at Powerboats last year under extensive refit, restoration. It was the purpose built long distance yacht from which modern trawlers evolved. All teak, beautiful work performed. Someone here will tag a name to it. There was a book written on it.

No one has mentioned that trawlers roll and benefit greatly from stabilizers. How about sail or motor cats?

[Sailing Hanse37]

Originally Posted by Knotical

A fuel efficient trawler will burn more or less the same amount of fuel as a comparable sailboat, maybe slightly more, if the trawler travels at the same speed as the sailboat - so the sailboat will end up being more expensive if one considers the cost of sails, rigging, maintenance etc.

A fast powerboat will burn a lot more than a trawler or a sailboat but arrive much faster at its destination.

Horses for courses 😊

I once saw a video of a guy who went from MA to FL on a new-to-him powerboat and spent something like 14k on fuel.

Well, i just want to add our real life experience when we motored from the Canary Islands to the Capverdian islands due to no wind at all. We had, with our beneteau 43 and a 55 hp yanmar, a fuel concumption between 1,7 and 1,8 litres per hour. The motor was running at 1500 to 1600 rpm and average speed was 5,5 knots. So that makes about 0,22 gallon/hour for 5,5 miles. Thus consumption per nautical mile is 0,22 / 5,5 = 0,04 gallon/nm. In metric units that makes 0,33 liter/nm.There is no motor boat capable of even approaching that consumption… a sailboat is built to be sleek in the water, offering the least water resistance possible… a motor boat, and certainly a trawler, never is.

[Sailing Hanse37]

Originally Posted by ranger58sb

Did you have to replace sails or any of the rigging during that period?

-Chris

Sails last over 10 years. Our first set of sails, which were not so good quality, lasted 12 years. Replacement costed us about 8k$. Replacement cost of the sails is much much lower than the fuel we would have used. And more important: thanks to thes sails we were able to do ocean crossings which would have been absolutely impossible without the sails.